TY - JOUR
T1 - Effect of digestate and digestate supplemented with biochar on switchgrass growth and chemical composition
AU - Lee, Moon Sub
AU - Urgun-Demirtas, Meltem
AU - Shen, Yanwen
AU - Zumpf, Colleen
AU - Anderson, Eric K.
AU - Rayburn, A. Lane
AU - Lee, D. K.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors gratefully acknowledge the US Department of Energy 's Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) for funding this work. Argonne National Laboratory, a US Department of Energy Office of Science Laboratory, is operated under contract no. DE-AC02-06CH11357. The US Government retains for itself, and others acting on its behalf, a paid-up nonexclusive, irrevocable worldwide license in said article to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies to the public, and perform publicly and display publicly, by or on behalf of the government. The funding source for the work reported here did not have a role in study design, data collection, analysis, data interpretation, writing, or in the decision to publish.
PY - 2021/1
Y1 - 2021/1
N2 - Digestate, a by-product of anaerobic digestion, can be an excellent source of nutrients for bioenergy crop production, while biochar, resulting from pyrolyzing biomass, can valorize the nutrients of digestate. The objective of this study was to evaluate the nutritional value of digestate and digestate + biochar for switchgrass production. The greenhouse experiment was conducted to determine the effects of a nitrogen (N) source including 0 N (control), urea (nutrient control), sewage sludge digestate, and sewage sludge digestate + corn stover biochar on switchgrass growth and feedstock composition. Nitrogen sources were found to significantly increase plant weight at the 32-week harvest, with weight ranging from 94.2 to 125.2 g plant−1, depending on the N source, compared to 70.7 g plant−1 from the negative control. Moreover, switchgrass treated with digestate + biochar showed higher plant weight than samples treated only with digestate. Nitrogen application of urea, digestate, and digestate + biochar had positive effects on plant height and total leaf area in the 32-week harvests and chlorophyll content in the 8-week harvests. Feedstock quality traits including hemicellulose, cellulose, and lignin content were not affected by N sources in either the 8 or 32-week harvests with the exception of ash concentration in the 32-week harvests. Our results indicate that digestate and digestate + biochar can be a potential substitute for chemical fertilizer, resulting in increased biomass yield.
AB - Digestate, a by-product of anaerobic digestion, can be an excellent source of nutrients for bioenergy crop production, while biochar, resulting from pyrolyzing biomass, can valorize the nutrients of digestate. The objective of this study was to evaluate the nutritional value of digestate and digestate + biochar for switchgrass production. The greenhouse experiment was conducted to determine the effects of a nitrogen (N) source including 0 N (control), urea (nutrient control), sewage sludge digestate, and sewage sludge digestate + corn stover biochar on switchgrass growth and feedstock composition. Nitrogen sources were found to significantly increase plant weight at the 32-week harvest, with weight ranging from 94.2 to 125.2 g plant−1, depending on the N source, compared to 70.7 g plant−1 from the negative control. Moreover, switchgrass treated with digestate + biochar showed higher plant weight than samples treated only with digestate. Nitrogen application of urea, digestate, and digestate + biochar had positive effects on plant height and total leaf area in the 32-week harvests and chlorophyll content in the 8-week harvests. Feedstock quality traits including hemicellulose, cellulose, and lignin content were not affected by N sources in either the 8 or 32-week harvests with the exception of ash concentration in the 32-week harvests. Our results indicate that digestate and digestate + biochar can be a potential substitute for chemical fertilizer, resulting in increased biomass yield.
KW - Biochar
KW - Bioenergy crop production
KW - Digestate
KW - N fertilization
KW - Switchgrass
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U2 - 10.1016/j.biombioe.2020.105928
DO - 10.1016/j.biombioe.2020.105928
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85098167603
VL - 144
JO - Biomass and Bioenergy
JF - Biomass and Bioenergy
SN - 0961-9534
M1 - 105928
ER -